Well, if they do, I hope they do it like Japan where they pixelate the man's schlong and leave the women parts clear. To me that's a win win.Originally posted by maverick1:
-- the day the FCC starts pixelating big bouncing hooters is the day I raise the black flag of rebellion
No net neutrality talk yet?
- Thread starter Blueathletics
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If you believe in the free market, it is really difficult to oppose this. I still haven't seen any substance behind the "Obama gonna tell us what to think" crowd.
What are you talking about? This is the government trying to protect the consumer from being forced into paying more for something they already enjoy. It is a utility and should be treated as one.
However, it should be noted that electricity is tiered in many states - in CA the more you use, the more you pay based on a tiered system.
This alone is enough to encourage innovation - now cities can innovate or go to start-ups to get new technologies thanks to getting rid of monopolies. This is why the big boys are really upset. I equate it to craft breweries and the 3 big beer makers.
I am absolutely perplexed by the people who are ALL IN on this goddam power grab, and still have absolutely no idea what's actually happening.
In a world where we get "Jobs Bills" all the time and the "Affordable Care Act", how the hell can you be all in on "Net Neutrality" without ever getting to see what that actually mean in practice. 90% of the time, this **** does the exact opposite of the title of the bill. I swear to god it's like Tommy Boy. I could take a **** on a piece of paper and call it "Net Neutrality" and you idiots would be acting like I saved the world because it's called "Net Neutrality".
If you think Wheeler was enlightened by a bunch of Redditors and change his mind then you're a goddam idiot. How about we wait to actually figure out what's happening before we claim the internet has been saved from the internet providers.
In a world where we get "Jobs Bills" all the time and the "Affordable Care Act", how the hell can you be all in on "Net Neutrality" without ever getting to see what that actually mean in practice. 90% of the time, this **** does the exact opposite of the title of the bill. I swear to god it's like Tommy Boy. I could take a **** on a piece of paper and call it "Net Neutrality" and you idiots would be acting like I saved the world because it's called "Net Neutrality".
If you think Wheeler was enlightened by a bunch of Redditors and change his mind then you're a goddam idiot. How about we wait to actually figure out what's happening before we claim the internet has been saved from the internet providers.
Can someone tell me a good, substantiated reason they are against adding some competition for the monopolistic ISP's? Not getting a straight answer from anyone.
Plenty of people gave you a straight answer.
1. Dems and others whined about big coorporations getting their hands on this, and then had Google, a big bad corporation, change language in the document. It was a hypocritical move.
2. Not only do we not know what that language was, we don't even know what was in the document. That's scary. Everyone here should be at least a little uneasy about that.
I don't think anyone is against keeping these ISP's in some what of a "check".. but we essentially just handed power from one group to another. And while I'm no network engineer (Heh, almost there), I'm pretty sure the ISPs understand the internet better than the government/FCC does...
Can you please give me one good, substantiated reason how what the FCC did yesterday adds competition?
Please, cite the specific provision of the regulations. I'll wait.
No, that was me. Seattle is Comcast territory, but several neighborhoods have a local ISP option (in addition to standard Comcast), and I think the ISP is a subsidiary of Wave.
I get gigabit for less than the 50Mbps offered by Comcast.
No contract.
Flat monthly fee.
No equipment.
No service charges.
The best part? I've never once been subject to an automated customer service line. I have a dude at the company I email for all my needs (and almost never have to). One time I tried emailing him and apparently he was out of town. Instead, I got a reply from the manager for the entire company.
Again, this is all for a much superior product at a much lower price.
1. Google has been expanding fiber optic service into areas, and even the mention of this has caused ISP's to magically provide faster rates and cheaper prices in those cities. Google's business model benefits from fast, unobstructed internet access to all citizens. Their interests happen to line up with ours.
2. The document will be available in a few weeks after final edits are made. This is because "two Republican commissioners, Ajit Pai and Mike O'Rielly-who oppose net neutrality of any sort-have refused to submit basic edits on the order.[/URL]" A typical process.
If you believe in the free market, I have no idea how you oppose this. This allows start ups to enter regions where they have been previously barred by state laws. All this does is dramatically lower the cost of entry that has given the ISP's local monopolistic status and ensures that no website's data may be impeded by the ISP's. ISP's own competing interests in television and internet service and have used this to their advantage by slowing traffic from Netflix. Further, they stole $200 billion from taxpayers that was supposed to go towards infrastructure development.
These are my options today. THEY HAVE STAYED THE EXACT SAME SPEED AND INCREASED IN PRICE. In what other area of technology have we seen this complete lack of progress in over a decade? It follows absolutely no trends in the price or improvement of technology in virtually every other private sector over the same time frame.
This post was edited on 2/27 9:53 PM by EastKYWildcat
I can't get that first link to post for some reason. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/fcc-confirms-net-neutrality-order-wont-be-released-today
Google is still a "big bad coirporation" (Who I love, for the record). So it's funny to hear them pick and choose who these terrible companies are, based on what it means to them.
The document should be AVAILABLE NOW! And if it's not ready, then pass this through when the document can be picked over. How crazy is that? That one side shuffles law legislation through before we all know what the hell it is? That is an absolute red flag. If this was so good for the people, as liberals love to tote around, then they would explain that ***** down to a T... but they didn't. And that's scary.
As for companies being allowed to buy faster pipelines, I agree 100%. I like that this allows start-ups a fair edge. I work for a start-up SaaS! But that's not what this is all about.
Here is the best explanation I've seen:
My understanding is: the way the law is written, whenever the FCC releases draft rules they have to open up a public comment period, which takes weeks or months.
So if they released it before the vote, they'd need to open up another comment period. Then if they made changes and released it again, another comment period - an infinite loop. Given the law as it stands, there's always one last phase where they have to go heads down and vote on a rule.
Yes, that means that nobody outside a tiny number of people at the FCC has read the final version. And yes, it's crazy the law is written this way.
That said, there are several people in the community of groups that have been working on this who were in constant conversation with the people drafting these rules and have a good idea of what's in them. That includes Free Press, as well as experts like Barbara van Schewick. So once we got close to the vote, and had good intel that the rules were pretty strong, it would have been crazy to ask them to be released. It would've given Comcast and friends another 8 weeks or maybe more to regroup and figure out a way to block the rules. (And we'd still not be in a position to know exactly what the final rules were until after the vote, due to the problem above.)
Also, re: the 322 pages of rules, I've heard the actual rules themselves are just a few pages. Things like: "no blocking", "no throttling", etc. The rest is context, legal justification of the rules, stuff like that.
All the details matter of course, but it's not really the case that there are 322 pages of mystery rules. Another really sleazy thing that some critics of the FCC (including Commissioner Pai himself) have done here is they've taken aspects the way the FCC has always worked (and they know this) and then pretended to be absolutely shocked that it's acting this way now.
One example of this was the fake outrage at President Obama saying what he thought the FCC should do (many presidents have done this, including Bush, Reagan, Clinton, and Nixon). Another example is this snafu about transparency, or about "322 pages of rules". It's not that the FCC shouldn't be more transparent, but it's sleazy of these guys, who know the process well, to pretend that it doesn't always work this way.
My understanding is: the way the law is written, whenever the FCC releases draft rules they have to open up a public comment period, which takes weeks or months.
So if they released it before the vote, they'd need to open up another comment period. Then if they made changes and released it again, another comment period - an infinite loop. Given the law as it stands, there's always one last phase where they have to go heads down and vote on a rule.
Yes, that means that nobody outside a tiny number of people at the FCC has read the final version. And yes, it's crazy the law is written this way.
That said, there are several people in the community of groups that have been working on this who were in constant conversation with the people drafting these rules and have a good idea of what's in them. That includes Free Press, as well as experts like Barbara van Schewick. So once we got close to the vote, and had good intel that the rules were pretty strong, it would have been crazy to ask them to be released. It would've given Comcast and friends another 8 weeks or maybe more to regroup and figure out a way to block the rules. (And we'd still not be in a position to know exactly what the final rules were until after the vote, due to the problem above.)
Also, re: the 322 pages of rules, I've heard the actual rules themselves are just a few pages. Things like: "no blocking", "no throttling", etc. The rest is context, legal justification of the rules, stuff like that.
All the details matter of course, but it's not really the case that there are 322 pages of mystery rules. Another really sleazy thing that some critics of the FCC (including Commissioner Pai himself) have done here is they've taken aspects the way the FCC has always worked (and they know this) and then pretended to be absolutely shocked that it's acting this way now.
One example of this was the fake outrage at President Obama saying what he thought the FCC should do (many presidents have done this, including Bush, Reagan, Clinton, and Nixon). Another example is this snafu about transparency, or about "322 pages of rules". It's not that the FCC shouldn't be more transparent, but it's sleazy of these guys, who know the process well, to pretend that it doesn't always work this way.
I somewhat get the optimism/hope since the cable and DSL providers have such historic bad service levels but that is not a startup type of business. CLECs tried to build in metro areas in the 90s when times were good but the ROI was not there and that was before wireless exploded.
Google has done it in limited markets because they have unlimited capital, tag along products, and the cities go out of their way to help. It is delusional to expect that to happen everywhere esp in areas where pricing sucks today. I pay $65 for only 10m to Windstream so no one wishes this would help more than me.
And I call BS on anyone saying they pay more than 10 years ago.
Google has done it in limited markets because they have unlimited capital, tag along products, and the cities go out of their way to help. It is delusional to expect that to happen everywhere esp in areas where pricing sucks today. I pay $65 for only 10m to Windstream so no one wishes this would help more than me.
And I call BS on anyone saying they pay more than 10 years ago.
So just to be clear, you don't really have any idea what was actually passed and whether or not that will actually result in more competition?
And you're asking people for a "substantiated reason they are against adding some competition for the monopolistic ISP's"?
And you're wondering why you can't get a straight answer?
This is a debate about regulation, not a government buyout. There are plenty of highly-regulated industries that still have plenty of competition, good service, good prices, etc. The restaurant business in this country is absurdly micromanaged by local governments, yet we still have the best table service and some of the best prices compared to countries with our standard of living. Health care? Highly regulated; still high quality. Automobiles? Same thing.
Regulation doesn't have to = bad produce/service and high prices. It only means those things if the regulation is poorly constructed, which is the fundamental question several people ITT have been asking.
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Telecom companies' main problem is the fact that they've been granted geographic monopolies over the past two decades. That is what has led to the absolutely abysmal treatment of customers and sub-standard product/pricing compared to other western nations.
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anon_l8pbkn96tg3j6
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In my eyes, the example above shows the free market works and no rule changes are needed. With just a little competition you get lower prices and better products. It wouldn't take long before the big cable companies would lose enough business to actually started competing with each other.
If you think it can't change, look at cell phone plans lately. Even ATT is offering something reasonable without a god awful 2 year contract. A couple years ago smart phone meant retarded cell phone bill. I think that is largely influenced by Cricket / Virgin Mobile / whatever other non-giant provider that tried to provide better service.
Also, EastKY, if you're going to just copy and paste comments from Reddit AMAs, citing your source will help.
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2xdsdw/the_internet_is_safe_we_are_a_group_of_a_few_net/
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2xdsdw/the_internet_is_safe_we_are_a_group_of_a_few_net/
Uhhh ATT has to compete with Sprint, T-Mobile, etc. I personally have switched from Sprint to ATT back to Sprint based purely on their prices/services.
TWC, however, doesn't have to compete with anybody in their weight class. They have their cows in the pen and get to pick how often they eat steak for dinner.
The free market clearly works until entry costs become so great that it is impossible. That's why it is a great idea to eliminate states laws that guarantee local monopolies. I'm having a hard time seeing how a law that helps the free market function is twisted as a bad idea. I can understand hesitance when the text of the decision is unrevealed, but that should be viewed as a problem with the process rather than this specific decision by the FCC.